The use of high-efficiency products in the treatment of aqueous suspensions of particulate, solid, water-insoluble materials has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Industry, in general, and research, in particular, are therefore continually searching for new systems which can be employed to facilitate the dewatering of aqueous suspensions of organic, or mixtures of organic and inorganic, materials such as distillary wastes, fermentation wastes, wastes from paper manufacturing plants, dye plant wastes and sewage suspensions such as digested sludges, activated sludges or raw and primary sludges from sewage treatment plants, etc.
The most recent and most successful materials introduced for the treatment of such suspensions have been the amidine and imidazoline polymers, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,406,139; 3,450,646; 3,576,740; 3,666,705, hereby incorporated herein by reference. These polymers are very effective materials for use in the treatment of industrial wastes. The polymers, however, are produced by the treatment of corresponding nitrile polymers and their structures are therefore governed by the structure of the nitrile polymer from which they are made. Furthermore, conversion of the nitrile polymers to the imidazoline or amidine polymers does not reach 100% and a portion of the resultant polymer is, therefore, non-functional in its water treating capacity.
Prior attempts to obviate these difficulties have included rearrangement of the groups present in the nitrile polymer charge and the attempted production of unsaturated imidazolines which may be homopolymerized or copolymerized into more active imidazoline polymers. Attempts to produce intermediates from which the unsaturated imidazolines may be prepared have, however, proven unsuccessful. Additionally, attempts to follow the teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 3,210,371 resulted only in the production of polymers while the teachings of Oxley et al, Jour. Chem. Soc., 1947, pgs. 497-505 also resulted in the recovery of polymeric products.